Take three chefs . . . to sea

As countless waistlines and elasticated trousers have demonstrated, it goes without saying that cruise passengers are interested in their food.
So P&O – whose ships feature restaurants overseen by three Michelin-starred chefs – have probably found the recipe for success with their latest promotion, especially as it comes in the week when one of their ships and one of those chefs is featured on breakfast TV each morning.
Travellers booking cruises on which Gary Rhodes, Marco Pierre White and Atul Kochhar are travelling next year will be entered into a draw to win one of 70 vouchers of £150 each to pay for meals at the chefs’ land-based restaurants.
Gary will be sailing on Oriana to the Western Mediterranean on May 3 and to Spain, Portugal and France on September 4. He will be on board Arcadia for the March 29 cruise to the Western Med, and the July 21 departure for Spitsbergen and the Norwegian fjords.
Marco travels on Ventura to the Western Med on March 27 and September 3, on Aurora to the Central Med on June 20, and Oceana to the Western Med on July 23, and to the Canaries on November 9.
Atul, whose Sindhu restaurant is a centrepiece of P&O’s newest ship, Azura, will be on board during the following cruises: May 12 to the Central Med; July 3 to the Baltic; September 18 to Spain, Portugal and Morocco; and November 11 to the Caribbean.
The vouchers are for meals at Gary’s Rhodes Twenty Four restaurant in Tower 42 in the City of London; Rhodes W! in the Cumberland Hotel, Marble Arch; Rhodes South at Christchurch Harbour in Dorset; Marco’s Yew Tree Inn, near Newbury, Berkshire; Wheeler’s of St James’s; and Atul’s Benares Restaurant in Berkeley Square and Vatika, at Wickham Vineyard in Hampshire.
Just one question: who’ll be in the kitchen at those restaurants while the big names are at sea?